Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Watchmen

Director: Zack Snyder
Stars: Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino (Full Cast)
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

The Plot: Set in an alternate vision of the year 1985, the murder of an ex-superhero causes a vigilante named Rorshach (Haley) to look into the matter, an investigation that reunites him with his surviving old colleagues -- all of them former superheroes themselves -- and gradually unveils a conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future.

THE BUZZ: With this movie and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, comic-book superheroes will continue to dominate the box office in 2009, a year after the genre truly broke as a bankable entity. And in Watchmen's case, never has a storyline been so intricate, with arcs that span from the Cuban Missle Crisis to the Reagan Era, and out to Mars and back again. Is it fit for mass consumption? Surely, especially now that audiences are connecting with anti-heroes (or, in this case, ex-superheroes), and let's not forget how in the 1980s are, too. Already people are talking about director Zack Snyder's page-to-screen take on the graphic novel by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore (the latter of whom is not on board with the project, thank you very much) -- has he copied the look of it too much? Not enough? Or are you, like thousands of other people, reading the book for the first time?